Is it me or does every top baby name list look almost the same? Does the world seem to be getting smaller? What happened to the cultural pride in choosing names that are quintessentially Australian or Maori? Shame really.

I'm Australian and I think it would be /weird/ if you weren't Aboriginal but gave your kid a strongly Aboriginal name. And even if you were, I'd probably think it was a better idea not to just because of all the discrimination. There are certainly names that could serve as a nod to Australian heritage - Matilda, Kylie etc - but I mean... for the majority of Australians, the dominant cultural influence is British, so...? I mean, if you're picking a name from your family tree or whatever, that's probably going to be the exact same set of names as Joe Q British picking names from his family tree. (And as for the world 'getting smaller' - Australia has had very similar naming trends to Britain for at least a century, so it's not exactly a new thing.) These days Australia's pretty multicultural, so it doesn't make sense to me to think that it should have its own set of names. Instead, it draws from its cultural influences, just like everywhere else (for e.g, your profile says you're in Canada, which draws its lovely baby naming taste from both Britain and France)